Capcom defended itself to IGN by saying they still required extra resources to develop the versus mode functionality,so it’s justified in charging extra. But in order to ship with the game, Capcom had to develop the versus mode functionality in tandem with the rest of the game, test it at the same time as the rest of the game, and package it with the rest of the game. It’s not in any way new creative content—it’s just a gameplay feature.

So is this really new content that’s worth paying $5 more for? Or did Capcom just look at the game, pick a component they felt they could turn off without harming the main playing experience, and then use that to spontaneously create another profit stream? Instead of creating and selling new content like Fable, Fallout 3, or Oblivion, they simply locked up part of the game’s functionality and are now selling the key.

Nintendo’s DS game Professor Layton and the Curious Village did a similar thing a year or so ago—the “downloadable” additional games actually shipped on the cartridge, even though you had to connect via wifi to access them. The difference there, though, was Nintendo didn’t try to gouge its customers to pay more money for content that was already on the game.